The Baylor Lady Red Raiders will be shooting for their fifth straight championship in the annual Best of Preps basketball tournament at Chattanooga State Friday night while the GPS Bruisers are just hoping to somehow and some way keep that from happening.
Both teams advanced to the finals with relatively-easy wins in Thursday’s semifinals.
Baylor totally dominated in a 58-17 romp over the Tyner Lady Rams while the Bruisers used an outstanding shooting performance to defeat the Red Bank Lionettes in a 55-36 final.
While Baylor-GPS takes center stage for the girls, Tyner and Red Bank will square off in a battle for third place at 4.
Notre Dame and CSAS will play in the consolation game for fifth place after winning against Central and Soddy Daisy respectively. The Lady Pounders and Lady Trojans will play for seventh place in Friday’s first game at 10 a.m.
BAYLOR 58, TYNER 17: This game was never close as Baylor opened the game with 12 straight points.
Baylor’s full-court defensive pressure was simply too much for the Lady Rams as it took more than five minutes at the start before Tyner even got its first shot attempt.
While Baylor’s defense was creating lots of turnovers and easy layups on the other end, the Lady Red Raiders also shot the ball extremely well as the lead was 17-4 when the first quarter ended and 44-8 at the half.
“We’re still trying to figure out who we are, but we have to play defense like that to have a chance of winning,” said Baylor coach John Gibson.
“We continue playing hard and working to get better, but as long as we play tough defense, we’ll figure out a way to score. We have to be able to play more than five or six girls if that’s the style we’re going to play, but we had several who are stepping up and doing just that,” he added.
Tyner coach Katrich Williams could only shake her head at the final result.
“I thought we did a better job in the second half, but we just had too many turnovers in the first half as we had a tough time just advancing the ball past half court,” she said outside the Tyner dressing room.
“Give a lot of credit to Baylor as they played some tough defense, but they also did a good job of hitting their shots. Games like this will only help us down the road, but I’m pretty sure we won’t face anything like this in our district,” she added.
Mya Long scored 15 points in the first half and finished with 17 to lead the Lady Red Raiders.
Cheyenne Lindsey and Raegyn Conley both followed with 11.
Keniah Watkins was the leading scorer for Tyner with seven points.
Baylor improves to 5-4 while Tyner is now 5-5 overall.
GPS 55, RED BANK 36: Brooke McCurdy may be the best 3-point shooter in town when she’s hot and that was the case against Red Bank.
The slender junior had four buckets from long range in the first half as she totaled 17 of her 27 points in the opening two quarters.
Her hot hand allowed the Bruisers to take an 11-5 lead after the first stanza while the difference was 29-16 at intermission.
Kiki Evers scored back-to-back buckets to start the second half as Red Bank got within 29-20 with 4:40 left in the third, but three 3s by Meg Priest and two more buckets by McCurdy gave the Bruisers their biggest lead of the game to that point at 43-23 when the third quarter ended.
The widest margin was 25 following a jumper from the wing by Lindsey Wyatt with just over three minutes to play.
Layla Babb then scored on a putback while Mya Kennebrew added two more buckets in the final 20 seconds for the final 19-point margin of victory.
“That was a good one as Brooke got more and more confidence as the game progressed and our girls did a good job of finding her,” said GPS coach Wes Moore about his junior sharp-shooter who had a season-high 30 points earlier against Ringgold.
“We tried to speed the game up as they were way bigger than us, but it helps everyone when Brooke is shooting like she did tonight. She’s really become a good player and is always the last one to leave the gym, so her hard work is starting to pay off,” Moore praised.
Red Bank coach Bailey McGinnis tried her best to somehow defend McCurdy’s shooting, but nothing seemed to work.
“That was frustrating,” McGinnis said after her team had fallen to 5-4 overall.
“She’s probably the best outside shooter I’ve seen. We tried to defend her close, but any little space she got, she scored. The good news is that we have Tyner tomorrow, so we’re just going to focus on the positive. We played hard the entire game and never quit, so I’m happy about that,” the former Red Bank great said quietly.
While McCurdy scored 27 to lead GPS, Priest followed with a dozen.
Kennebrew was tops for Red Bank with 12 points while Jasmine Roberts and Babb both finished with six.
NOTRE DAME DEFEATED Central by a 46-34 final as Mackenzie Johnson scored 10 points and Bella Bombassi nine for the Lady Irish. Alivia Smith had 15 for Central while Ja’Nya West added nine.
The Lady Patriots got 29 points from Lennex Walker in a 41-18 victory over Soddy Daisy. Younger sister Lamiyah Walker tossed in 11 for the winners. Alexis Trimiar had 10 points for the Lady Trojans.
GIRLS SEMIFINAL SUMMARIES
TYNER 4 4 4 5 -- 17
BAYLOR 17 27 10 4 -- 58
TYNER (17) – McKenzie 2, Bedford 2, Cooley, Crumsey 2, Melton 3, McCutcheon, McGee, Watkins 7, Taylor 1, Jones, Burks.
BAYLOR (58) – Buckner, Willis 5, Lindsey 11, Camp 2, Parker 2, Randolph, Conley 11, Brown, Rye, Wardeberg 8, Long 17, Keller 2, Enalls, McKnight, Rich.
3-POINT GOALS: Tyner 1 (Watkins); Baylor 8 (Willis, Lindsey, Conley 2, Wardeberg 2, Long 2).
RED BANK 5 11 7 13 -- 36
GPS 11 18 14 12 -- 55
RED BANK (36) – Roberts 6, Babb 6, Romans 3, Claiborne 3, Evers 4, Kennebrew 12, Bowens, Ndiaye 2, Stewart.
GPS (55) – Wyatt 2, Dunigan 3, Jennings 6, Priest 12, McCurdy 27, Wahler, Conover, Beaman, Smith 5.
3-POINT GOALS: Red Bank 3 (Roberts, Babb, Claiborne); GPS 9 (Priest 3, McCurdy 6).
(Email John Hunt at nomarathonmoose@gmail.com)